Questions about payment info

I'm thinking of switching over from "No payment info on file" to "Payment info used", but I have a few questions.

1. Do they take debit cards as well as credit cards?
2. Can anything happen is I JUST give them payment info? (In other words, will they take my money?)
3. Do I have to put credit on my account to buy L$? Because I might not necessarily want to buy $25 worth of L$.

I use a debit card. I've bought as little as $5.00 USD in Linden with it.

Did you have to do the "increase your credit" thing to do it?

Why? I'm not sure what you're after here. You can have payment info on file I believe, which means they have a record of your payment info for when you want to spend money. Payment info used means you have spent money with Linden Lab.

They won't take money from you unless you authorise the transaction.

What I mean is that I'm thinking of giving them payment info, so that it's on file.

You won't be charged until you actually spend money but your avatar status will say payment info on file.

This link should show you the different levels of account to hopefully give you more info:

https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/default.asp?deptID=4417&task=knowledge&questionID=4432

Once I have payment info on file, do I have to do "increase your credit" in order to buy Linden Dollars?

Only if you make a 'limit buy' offer (where you choose the rate you want to buy). If you fill the 'market buy' form, you don't need to have US$ credit on your account.

Ok, that's kind of what I thought, but I couldn't tell if it meant I needed credit on my account for all buy orders or just limit buys.

There is actually a bug on this. Your avatar profile inworld will continue to say 'no payment info on file' until you actually do use it and then it changes straight to "payment info used". There has actually been some speculation on whether or not the in-between status of "payment info on file" even exists anymore (except for those that obtained that status before the current bug).

Well I put payment info on file and now my bank account balance is down by $2. I know that's not a fortune, but what happened?

That is how they verify the credit card. The money will return to your account in 30 days.

So I guess the answer to question 2 was yes then.

Surely they must have told you somewhere they were going to do this?

If they did I didn't see it.

That has NEVER happened on any of my accounts. Check the account statements. I am pretty sure that didn't just come out of the blue. Might have been billed for something else entirely.

you do not get the money back.

https://support.secondlife.com/ics/support/KBAnswer.asp?questionID=3962

This says that your credit card was not actually BILLED but simply had an AUTHORIZATION REQUEST.

So do I get my two bucks back or not? And if not, why not?

Was it really BILLED by LL or is it just showing as an Authorization Request (some credit cards do not easily show the difference on this)? If just an Authorization, it will clear, probably tomorrow, Monday.

If it really is a charge - contact LL and ask why.

I'm not seeing any transactions on my bank account that would have taken it, so I guess I'll just wait until Monday before I freak out.

Good news everyone! My missing money is back! Yay! If you can't tell, I'm a little new to making payments online. Ok, one more question. If I have PayPal as my payment info, do I have to have money in my PayPal account to use it? (Because apparently it takes like a week to get money from the bank to a PayPal account.)

It doesn't take a week, it takes more than a week getting money from PayPal to your bank account but payments the other way don't take a week.

Well ok, 3-4 days. Even so, can you use payment (to buy L$ for example) without having money in your paypal account? Because if I'm reading the paypal website right, I can change my "funding source" for Linden to either my bank or debit card.

If your PayPal Primary funding source is your bank account, when you buy L$ here, LL sends the tran to Paypal and Paypal will immediately request an EFT transaction from your bank. Everyone gets their money right away, though the actual *posting* on your bank account might show as the next day or two depending on the day of the week.